164 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



with the prehistoric horses, using them for 

 food, as they did almost every animal that fell 

 beneath their flint arrows and stone axes. And 

 if one may judge from the abundance of bones, 

 the horses must have roamed about in bands, 

 just as the horses escaped from civilization 

 roam, or have roamed, over the pampas of 

 South America and the prairies of the West. 



The horse was just as abundant in North 

 America in Pleistocene time as in Europe ; 

 but there is no evidence to show that it was 

 contemporary with early man in North Amer- 

 ica, and, even were this the case, it is generally 

 believed that long before the discovery of 

 America the horse had disappeared. And yet, 

 so plentiful and so fresh are his remains, and 

 so much like those of the mustang, that the 

 late Professor Cope was wont to say that it 

 almost seemed as if the horse might have 

 lingered in Texas until the coming of the white 

 man. And Sir William Flower wrote : " There 

 is a possibility of the animal having still ex- 

 isted, in a wild state, in some parts of the con- 

 tinent remote from that which was first visited 

 by the Spaniards, where they were certainly 



